


Catching Up

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [29]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Base Rumors, Blind Character, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Dokma, Dokma Races, Dokma Swarm, Friendship, Gen, Space family, Tactile Alphabet, Zeb's secret waffle stash, space braille
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 09:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10964160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: In the wake of Ezra's big reveal, things have been a little hectic.  Zeb and Kanan take the opportunity to get caught up on what's happening in each others' lives.





	Catching Up

Zeb exited the ship and turned in the direction of the base supply depot. If he was lucky, AP-5 would be busy with something else, and not only would he be able to get the equipment he needed without having to endure a barrage of insults, he might be able to snag another packet of waffles while he was at it. He probably wasn’t going to be lucky, though. He rarely was.

He stopped himself a split second before he accidentally brought a foot down on one of the dokma that made up the swarm that had suddenly and inexplicably descended onto the base. Instead, he stepped carefully around it and trained his eyes on the ground to avoid the rest of the things.

As he walked, or rather, picked his way among them, he glared down at them with a mixture of confusion and frustration. It hadn’t been so bad a few days back; there had still been noticeably more, but they hadn’t begun to impact operations. Now, the population had exploded for no apparent reason, and he was having to think about what they were going to do if it just kept getting worse.

From a security point of view, it had the potential to be a major problem. If people couldn't freely move from one part of the base to another, that would slow reaction times in an emergency, and potentially put lives at risk. Even in non-emergency situations, it wasn’t useful to have the ground filled with moving obstacles just the right size to get underfoot.

He stepped around a cluster of four of the things, and over a fifth that was traveling slowly past them, then took a few more steps, taking care not to raise his eyes from the ground just before his feet, and almost walked straight into Kanan. He was saved from an actual impact by the Jedi’s quick reactions; Kanan dodged out of the way, expertly avoiding another group of dokma as he did.

Zeb cursed under his breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m so busy trying not to trip, that I forgot to look out for other people.”

Kanan nodded. His lips stretched into something that resembled a smile, but it faltered and disappeared almost instantly. “I know that feeling,” he said quietly.

Right. He would. In a way. Zeb glared down at the dokma again. “Yeah, well the little bogans need to clear out now, it’s getting beyond a joke. Someone should tell them this is our land. They can crowd out the whole planet over there in spider territory, but we need to be able to move around our own base without having to dance around them.”

“Technically,” Kanan said, “they were here first. We just came along and built a base on top of them. We can’t blame them for doing what they’ve always done.”

Typical Kanan response. Or, typical response from Kanan now. A year or so ago he’d have been leading the charge to get rid of the creatures.

“Yeah, well it’s ours now,” Zeb told him. He sighed and nudged one of the creature’s shells with a toe. “Where’ve you been anyway? Haven’t seen you all day.”

Kanan visibly hesitated, then shrugged. “I spent most of the afternoon with Sabine," he said. “She’s… trying to teach me something.”

“Teaching _you_?” Zeb grinned. “I bet that’s a change of pace, isn’t it? No offence, but I can’t imagine you as the student.”

Kanan shrugged. “I was a padawan once,” he said. “And I’ve learnt a lot these past months.”

That was true; when Zeb thought about where Kanan had been four months ago and compared it to now, the difference was incredible, but he had been his own teacher; there had been nobody around to tutor him. Ezra was lucky in that regard.

Well, ‘lucky’ might be the wrong word.

“So what’s she teaching you?” Zeb asked. The only thing he could imagine Sabine knew that Kanan didn’t, was how to paint and draw, and if she was trying to teach Kanan _that_...

“She found something. An alphabet that...” Kanan licked his lips and folded his arms. He looked thoughtful, as though he was trying to think of the right way to explain. “It’s a way of reading by touch,” he said. “It’s interesting, as an exercise, but practical applications? I’m not sure.”

Of course. Sabine had shown it to him once, the night after Ezra had told them. Half excited by her discovery, half embarrassed that she might have made a mistake by pinning her hopes on it, she had talked him through the basic information, explained how it worked, told him how she thought it might help. He tried to remember what she had called it. Something about tactics, or… no. The tac _tile_ alphabet, that was it. He didn’t know whether that was its real name, or simply the words she had used to describe it.

She had only spoken about giving the information to Ezra, she hadn’t even mentioned Kanan. It made sense though, he’d benefit from it just as much.

How a person was supposed to learn something like that, though, was beyond him. That night, she had shown him the printed version of the alphabet, then a few days later, a sheet of bumps she had gotten from who-knew-where. The patterns of the dots appeared completely arbitrary; though he figured there must have been _some_ kind of a pattern to it, he couldn’t figure it out. Not that he had tried particularly hard.

“So she got you as well as Ezra,” he said.

Kanan hesitated again, then shook his head. “Not exactly. Ezra’s got a lot going on right now. Maybe he’ll try it later.”

Translation: the kid had thrown it back in her face. Zeb couldn't exactly blame him, the whole thing had looked incomprehensible, and Kanan was right, Ezra was dealing with enough already, the last thing he needed was to have to take on some kind of academic study as well. It wasn’t like he was a big reader anyway. Probably figured it’d be a lot of effort for no real gain. 

“Yeah,” Zeb said. “Doesn’t look like an easy thing to learn anyway.” He raised a hand and wiggled his fingers demonstratively. For all the good that would do around Kanan. “I mean, for me it’d be impossible; you should try reading those tiny bumps with these things. I gave it a go, but I could feel two lines at once. Or one line, and the bottom and top of the two on either side. Either way, _you’ve_ got the right sized fingers for it.”

Kanan flexed his own fingers, as though testing them out. He nodded, and Zeb wondered, just for a moment, whether he even remembered how Lasat hands looked.

“I might be able to learn it by sight, though,” Zeb said, then stopped abruptly, embarrassed as the ridiculousness of that statement struck him. There was no reason to be embarrassed, of course; he could see, of course he was going to do things by sight. Still, recent events had made him very aware that that was not a privilege that everybody shared. “Uh, but of course that’s not what it’s for, is it? I’ve got normal writing for…” He stopped again, not wanting to imply that the tactile alphabet wasn’t normal. But then, it wasn’t, was it? That was why none of them had even heard of it a week earlier. “I’m just going to stop talking now,” he said.

Kanan grinned, then let out a laugh that sounded genuine. He clasped Zeb on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. And there’s no reason you can’t learn it that way, if you want to. Sabine is. I mean, I assume she is.”

But Zeb did worry. He especially worried about saying something like that in front of Ezra; the kid’s emotional state was precarious enough as it was, without people he was supposed to be able to trust hurting him by accident.

“So what about you?” Kanan asked him. “What have you been doing today?”

Zeb glared down at the dokma again. “Dodging obstacles, mostly,” he said. “I’ve put a few teams on collection duty, Hera’s idea. We’re basically picking the things up, transporting them off the base and dumping them. It’s pointless, they’re only gonna come back again. But at least it feels like we’re going something about it.”

“They might not,” Kanan said. “It depends where you’re putting them, and if it’s the direction they came from or the one they’re heading in.”

“Heading in?” Zeb frowned, wondering if Kanan genuinely didn’t know what was happening. “They’re not heading in any direction, Kanan. They’re just wandering around aimlessly getting in everyone's way.”

“Ezra’s got a theory about them,” Kanan said. “If he’s right, they might not be a problem for too much longer.”

“Oh?”

Kanan took a few steps backward, avoiding dokma as he did, and leaned against a wall. There was no hesitancy in his steps, and he didn’t even reach behind him to check that he was in the right place before trusting the wall to be there to take his weight. Zeb watched, fascinated; not only could Kanan navigate the base without sight, he could do so backwards, and surrounded by trip hazards. Even after so many months, it was impressive.

“He thinks it’s some kind of a migration,” Kanan said. “They’re trying to get somewhere, but they’ve noticed the spiders don’t come onto the base and so decided to stick around for a while. He thinks eventually the drive to move on is going to win out and they’ll be on their way.”

“Huh.” Zeb mulled that over in his mind. As a theory, it was as good as any. “What made him come up with that?”

Kanan shrugged. “Ezra has a talent for making connections,” he said. “I asked him if he’d see what he could find out about our new houseguests. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest; it was just supposed to be a distraction for him. He’s been having a difficult few days.”

Zeb felt an unexpected spike of protectiveness at that. “Why?” he asked, “Did something happen?”

Kanan frowned, looking thoughtful, then shook his head. “Nothing specific,” he said. “People… talk. Some of them talk to him.”

“Yeah,” Zeb muttered. People had been talking the previous day when he had overheard a conversation about the Force. The whole thing had left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn’t even the one that it had been directed at.

“Did it work?” he asked. “Did you distract him?”

“For a while.” Kanan sighed, and Zeb got the impression that that wasn’t the only thing that was bothering him. “By the way, it’s dark now, right?”

The question, such an unexpected change of subject, took Zeb by surprise. Before he realized what he was doing, and despite the fact that he already knew the answer, he found himself looking around to verify his response, double-checking as though it might have been a trick question.

Of course, there was no trick. It was strange to think that Kanan wouldn't know something that simple, or couldn’t be sure of it. It was such a basic thing; to know whether it was day or night. He wondered how losing that ability might mess with your sleeping patterns. That, combined with feeling down anyway, there was little wonder Kanan had retreated to his room for so many months.

“Yeah,” Zeb replied. “Pretty much dark. Why?”

“So, say… ten minutes ago, how dark was it then?”

Zeb frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not an easy thing to describe,” he said. Even putting aside the fact that he knew his Lasat eyes perceived things differently than Kanan’s human ones had, without visual references it was difficult to describe a level of light. “Not quite there, but almost. I think the sun had set, but it wasn’t fully dark yet. Twilight, you know? Why?”

Kanan shook his head. “No reason.”

Translation: he didn’t want to talk about it. Or he couldn't talk about it. Zeb could understand either reason. The most likely explanation was that it had something to do with Ezra; and with the condition currently stealing away his sight. It affected his night vision…

Zeb forced himself to stop thinking. If Kanan didn’t want to talk about it, he probably didn’t want people working it out instead. He wasn’t getting any of those ‘I don’t mind if you guess’ vibes that you sometimes found around a secret from him.

“Can you do me a favor?” Kanan asked.

“If I can.”

Kanan didn’t continue right away. He took a slow, deep breath, and folded his arms, the fingers of one hand tapping on his own arm. If his face hadn’t been partially covered, and if his eyes could see, Zeb imagined that he would be staring off into the distance; not because there was anything there worth looking at, but just to avoid looking at Zeb.

“I can’t be there for Ezra all the time,” he said, “and even if I could, I don’t think it’d be helpful. There are things he needs to learn to deal with that I can’t help him with.”

That made sense. Zeb remained where he was, waiting for a continuation.

“But if you notice anything. Like if you find he’s spending too much time hiding away, or anything like that, can you let me know? Just be on the lookout for odd behavior. Keep an eye on him when I can’t.”

Zeb resisted the temptation to make the obvious joke. He could do that with Kanan, but right now it didn’t feel right. Instead, he nodded. “Already doing that,” he said. He wasn’t sure how good a job he was doing, but he was doing it, and he didn’t need to be asked to look out for his family.

Kanan nodded too. “I figured as much.”

Actually, now he thought about it, on the topic of ‘looking out for his family’, he wondered how Kanan, too, might react to the thing he had overheard the previous day; the idea that the Force was responsible for what was happening to Ezra. There had been an implication there that it had also been responsible for Kanan’s blinding. It was nonsense, of course; all of it was, but just the idea of it made Zeb angry. He didn’t know whether he should mention it, or whether that might make things worse.

He usually found that the best thing to do in those situations was to say something else, and put off making a decision until he knew what might be best. “Hey, talking of odd behavior,” he ventured. “Two guys I barely know came up to me this morning with sketches of Chopper, asked me which one was best.”

Kanan frowned, confused either by the sudden change of subject, or by the strangeness of the request.

“I mean, they were both okay. Not up to Sabine’s standards, of course, but they were just rough sketches, you know? Like they’d just been done to get some ideas down.” It occurred to him as he spoke that drawings and art might be a sore subject. It was too late to back out now, and Kanan didn’t appear to be bothered, but Zeb added it to the mental list of things not to mention to Ezra.

“Sketches of Chopper?” Kanan repeated, sounding confused.

Zeb nodded. “Yeah. One of him just standing there, the other of him delivering a pretty brutal-looking electric shock to some guy. I said that one was best.” He grinned. “It captured his essence.”

Kanan smiled back at him. “You probably made the right choice. Any idea why they asked you?”

They hadn’t actually said, and he had gotten the impression that had been deliberate, but Zeb was smarter than people gave him credit for. “One of them mentioned having some of the sparks of electricity traveling down the sides of the ship,” he said. “Sounds crazy, I know, but I think they’re planning on painting it on one of the fighters.”

“Oh…kay. Interesting choice.”

“I might ask Sabine when I see her, see if she’d heard anything,” Zeb added.

Kanan nodded, then stood up straight, moving away from the wall that he had been leaning on, like he was about to leave. “Sabine could use a distraction,” he said. “Everybody’s a little on edge lately.”

It was tough to argue with that. Zeb sighed, and made a decision; it was better to tell Kanan about the rumours than leave it and let him and Ezra overhear it for themselves. “Hey, Kanan,” he said.

Kanan turned back to face him.

“People have been saying stuff. You know that, right?”

Kanan didn’t respond, he waited silently for Zeb to continue.

“Stuff about Ezra, behind his back. I know it’s probably be be expected, same thing happened when you…” he paused, did Kanan know about that? “Same thing happens every time anything big happens,” he amended.

Kanan nodded. “It does,” he said. “What have you heard?”

Zeb folded his arms — a human gesture that he had picked up somehow without noticing — and tried to think of the right way to explain. “There’s a rumor going around. I did my best to stamp it out, but I can only do so much by standing nearby trying to look threatening while people talk…”

He paused, leaving time for Kanan to make a joke about that. Nothing happened.

“Anyway, they’re talking about the Force making Ezra… you know. Like something’s gone wrong with it, and anybody who uses it ends up…”

“Blind,” Kanan finished for him.

Zeb sighed. Why was it so hard sometimes to say that word? Moreso recently, but it had never been easy. “Yeah,” he agreed.

Kanan half-turned away, as though staring into the distance again. He folded his arms, then went very still and said nothing. Zeb watched him warily, unsure how he was about to react.

“You okay?” he tried.

“Yes,” Kanan assured him. He leaned against the wall again, falling back and allowing it to catch him, then shook his head slowly from side to side. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

Zeb continued to watch him. He didn’t appear to be angry or upset, he didn’t appear to be anything.

“The Force doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“I know that.”

Kanan nodded. “But I can see why they might come to that conclusion.” He took a breath and sighed deeply. “I should have anticipated this.”

“No reason why you should,” Zeb told him. Kanan had had more than enough on his mind the past couple of weeks, without trying to guess every little thought that might pop into the head of every idiot on the base.

“Whether I should or not,” Kanan said. “I need to decide what I’m going to do about it. And I need to speak to Ezra, that’s not something he should have to hear.”

Zeb shrugged. “In that case, is it something you want to be telling him about? You know the kid, it doesn’t matter where he hears it from, he’s going to end up wondering whether it’s true.”

Kanan appeared to consider that, then turned to face Zeb again. “You’re saying I should let him hear it from somewhere else?”

“No, not exactly,” he replied. He thought about it carefully, running scenarios in his head.

There may be a few idiots around, but for the most part everybody on the base was a decent person who would never deliberately do something to harm another person. Unless that other person happened to fight for the Empire, of course. Nobody was going to go running to Ezra with their theory, not without a good reason.

“Not telling him doesn’t guarantee he won’t hear it,” Zeb said. “But telling him guarantees that he will. Maybe it’d be better to try to contain it, stamp it out. The whole thing might just blow over without anybody noticing.”

Kanan considered that for a few moments. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully. “ _Can_ we contain it?”

Zeb shrugged. “We can try.”

For a moment, Kanan looked as though he wanted to argue, or at the very least add another point to the conversation. He didn’t. Instead, he nodded decisively. “Okay, we’ll try it your way,” he agreed.

Zeb grimaced. Like with so many things, they were working by trial and error, muddling through, trying their best, hoping not to do too much damage along the way. It was how things had always been, it just felt like the stakes were higher sometimes. He sighed. “Fancy a drink?” he asked. “I know I could use one.”

Kanan hesitated, like he wanted to agree but had something he thought he should be doing. Something Ezra-related, Zeb assumed. He wondered where the kid was. At the races, probably, it was where he spent most of his evenings.

Or, he had used to. Everything had changed recently, maybe that had too.

“Weren’t you on your way somewhere?” Kanan asked.

Zeb shrugged. “Just the supply depot, but I could see if I can I could find a bottle of something while I’m there.”

“Going to restock your stash?” Kanan asked him.

Zeb glanced at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Your secret stash of waffles,” Kanan clarified, with a completely straight face.

Zeb didn’t know how that had gotten out; whether it was just a rumor that had taken on a life of its own somehow, or whether someone actually knew about his personal supply. Either way, it was annoying. It made him feel like people were watching him all the time, trying to prove it true. He folded his arms defensively. “You mean the made-up one that I don’t have?”

Kanan smiled. “That’s the one,” he said. “Anyway, sure. A drink sounds good. I tried the first of the new batch from the improved still the other day, it’s not bad.”

“That’ll do,” Zeb said, grudgingly. “But I was hoping we’d be able to find a bottle of something real. You know the supplies we got from the shipment heading to the Imperial Fleet? I heard a rumor there was some Corellian whiskey among it.”

“That’s true,” Kanan said. “Unfortunately, most of it disappeared pretty quickly. You’ll have more chance of winning a bottle on the races than finding it at the bottom of a supply crate.”

Well, so much for that plan then. Zeb took a deep breath and released a sigh. “Figures. Well, if the still is all we have, the still will have to do. Maybe I _will_ place a bet on the dokma while I’m there.” If he was lucky, he might be able to get his hands on a bottle of the good stuff after all.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ ♥ Comments are loved ♥ ♥


End file.
